Blog Monetization & Income Streams For Beginning Bloggers

You are a new blogger and you want to begin to bring a stream of income to your blog, you must do a little extra work other than just writing your blog (ya I know, it’s the not so fun part). While you must always have good content to draw people to your blog, but if you want to do this as a job, you need to find ways to monetize. As I am learning as I go, I want to be able to help y’all as I gather info and apply it to my own site. It’s certainly a process and it always helps a little to have someone else help in the research process! I won’t admit to be an expert by any means, but I will say, I’ve read a lot and every little bit of learning helps!

TRAVEL TILL YOU DROP

Google AdSense- This is the first revenue stream that most individuals will add onto their site. To add this to my blog I had to fist go and apply on www.google.com/adsense On this website, you have to go and add the appropriate info about your site and google has to approve the site. If it’s an empty site and you try to add AdSense to it, Google will deny it. It’s a small income stream at first, but for every click on an add, there will be funds placed into your account. The more people that visit your site and click on the ads, the better your return. It will take some time to make an income, but keep at it and it will pay off.

Note: If you click on the ads from your own site you will not be given credit. If you try to scam the system and have others click and click and click for you, Google will shut your AdSense account down and anything you did make is gone! So, as long as everything is on the up and up, you should be ok.

From there, once you receive the email back showing you are approved, you can go into your account and create the type of ad that you would like to have on your blog. There are several different sizes of ads. You click and create and copy and paste the code into your blog. Here’s how you work that piece. In WordPress there is a “plugin” that you have to go locate under appearance

Once you click plugin’s you will then probably have to “add new”. There you will find the Easy Plugin for Google AdSense. From there, install and activate it.

After it is installed and activated it will give you the option to configure settings. Click on that and it will show a number of boxes that will allow you to place the code that you acquire on the AdSense page. You can create as many ads as you like, but make sure you double check your page once you have completed this step. Too many ads may be obnoxious to your visitors and may keep them from coming back. So, just be careful and try to find your happy medium. If you don’t see your ads popping up right away, give it a day to see if it then populates. I’ve read that there are 2 approval phases and it may just take a bit to get that approval. Also, make sure to note that there are several different plugin’s to place the ads. Some will charge for their services, some will not. I tried the first site, Easy Ad and for whatever reason the ads didn’t show up. I then tried the site written by Google and it walked me through the addition. The “manage ads” effectively takes a look at your site so it can place ads where it makes the most sense. From there, you’ll see the blocks where they intend to place the ads and it will take several minutes before the actual ads show up.

Just a heads: Remember not to click on the ads. If the IP address matches yours, they will cancel your account due to a policy violation.

Affiliate programs
What is it first off? It’s an agreement between you and a company to sell a product on your site for them. You receive a commission if someone purchase the item once they click on the add off of your page. It appears this is much more profitable than AdSense, but people do have to buy the product to receive funds.

Amazon Affiliate
Well, all, as soon as I attempted to get on as an Amazon Affiliate, it wouldn’t allow me to get past the captcha section to get through filing out the document. So I contacted Amazon and they told me there were certain states that were not allowed to participate. It appears that Colorado is one of them. I was referred to their associates agreement for all of the states that are not authorized. So, jut a heads!

Commission Junction
These guys have a ton of different companies hiding out there that want you as an affiliate marketer. Create a login, choose the companies that you would like to have represented on your site and apply. Each of the companies will approve/disapprove based upon their site requirements. Once you are approved, you can go grab the appropriate link and add it to your site. Remember though, too many ads, tick people off. 😉

Other products:
If you think of a product you’d really like to represent on your page, you can check with the company itself. One of mine was Marriott. I typed Marriott Affiliate Program into Google and wa-la, it took me right to their page. I input all of my info and bam, once approved, grabbed the code and into the site it went. So just because it’s not on one of of the major affiliate sites, check with the individual companies to see if they have a program.

Ad positioning
One of the best places to place an ad is directly after the first paragraph. I’d recommend placing a picture prior to the ad, or the ad will show up on Bloglovin’ as the photo of your post. Heads.

Alright y’all, thanks for joining me as i learn the process of blog monetization. Lots more to come!

About the Author

I have an undying passion for travel and exploring the unknown (at least to me). My curiosity and the military previously transported me around the world a few times only furthering my need to see more. Different cultures and people intrigue me. Learning new ways to do things, eating new foods, and dancing to a tune is part of my soul. Being able to just pack up and go with no real idea of where I'm going is what I call fun...now, I'm going to take you all along for the ride.

7 Comments

Hi Sonja, You are ever so welcome. I’ve made a million and one mistakes already and my noggin’ hurts, but it’s fun to come across something so simple and bam, it changes everything. Next step, branding 😉 I’ll let ya know how it goes! Jill